Crazy Ride

by Nancy Warren

  He looked around at the former madam’s quarters and started to laugh. Old Emmet and his crazed ideas about this place were true. He’d been healed by the most talented Intimate Healer of them all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The bingo hall was more than usually stuffy. Every person in town seemed to be there, but probably about two hundred people in total packed the hall. Every chair and bench seat was taken and the back of the hall and around the edges was packed.

  Emily had done her best, the rest was up to Joe, the townspeople, the unpleasant men from the mining company and most of all, to fate.

  There was a restive feeling something like she remembered before big concerts in her college days, when the anxious crowd of fans waited for the band to mount the stage.

  Of course, most of the restlessness in this venue was caused by anxiety. There was a sudden hush from where she sat near the main entrance, and she watched the Gellman brothers enter, pause when they saw the size of the crowd and then make for the stage. Joe came in behind them. He touched her shoulder in passing, giving it a reassuring squeeze, then followed the other men to the stage.

  Emily rested her hand on her shoulder where the imprint of his touch still lingered.

  The microphone made an ear-piercing shriek as Joe pulled it to his mouth. “Good evening,” he said. “Most of you have seen me around here the last couple of weeks. I’m Joe Moncrief. I’m here to tell you about an exciting project we’re thinking about implementing in the immediate area of Beaverton. Something that will bring jobs and prosperity to this area. These gentlemen with me are Milton and Eric Gellman. They’re going to tell you what they’re planning and then we’ll take questions. Now I’d like to introduce Mr. Eric Gellman.”

  There was dead silence. Not even a polite smattering of applause.

  He passed over the microphone and the thin brother rose and took his place. “Thank you Joe,” he said. “Now, we know this area is depressed and your incomes are paltry.” Oh, great. Start by insulting them, that was going to work. Sheesh. Around her she felt hackles rising. These were people who didn’t take to patronizing well. As Joe knew.

  Across the sea of heads she saw that Joe was looking in her direction and she could have sworn he winked at her. She kept her gaze on him for another five minutes while the thin man rambled on about how bad the economy was in this area, then Joe nodded. It looked to anyone else as though he was agreeing with Gellman, but it was her signal. She pushed send on his cell phone.

  Beneath the table her foot started to tap. Was there any chance at all that his plan was going to work?

  Another minute went by, the longest sixty seconds of her life, and then she heard a woman shrieking. Everyone in the vicinity of the main entrance turned their heads and Gellman at the front paused in mid-sentence and then continued on. “What we have in mind is job creation, a boost to your starving economy, a—”

  He fell silent when the shriek turned to a scream and Geraldine Mullet burst into the Bingo hall as though bayonets were at her back. She looked fabulous in one of Olive’s old gowns, a heavy red velvet with a full skirt. Emily had no idea where they’d found the bonnet, but she was pretty sure she recognized part of her straw sunhat that had been sacrificed to make a not-bad imitation of something Vivien Leigh might have worn in Gone with the Wind.

  The beeswax candle was certainly one of the good ones she kept for Christmas, and it looked very authentic in the brass-handled candleholder that had belonged to Emmet Beaver. The flame flickered alarmingly in Geraldine’s trembling hand. She waited a moment until everyone had seen her, then rushed to the stage and put one hand to her heaving bosom.

  “They’re here!” she cried. “Those damned Yankees are here. They won’t take Tara. I won’t let them!”

  Emily tore her eyes away to look at the thin Gellman brother who was gaping at Geraldine.

  After a dramatic pause, Geraldine shouted, “I’ll burn this place before I’ll let them take it!”

  She waved the candle around a bit and Olive yelled ‘Fire’ and elbowed Harold Beasman sharply in the ribs. He’d been half dozing but at the magic word ‘fire’ he rose. Olive handed him the red plastic fireman’s hat that she’d put in her bag. He took it, shoved it on his balding head and said, in a remarkably commanding tone, “Don’t worry about a thing, folks. Everything’s under control.”

  “What is this insane old biddy doing?” the thin Gellman brother said, obviously forgetting he was still standing at the microphone. His words boomed out across the crowd. “Put that damned candle out,” he ordered.

  Everyone in town might agree that Geraldine was an insane old biddy, but they liked her and you didn’t go around name calling in Beaverton and get away with it.

  Geraldine obviously didn’t like it either, because she reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a heavy-looking pistol that had to be an authentic civil war piece. It was big and wooden and bulky in her hand, but it looked awfully impressive as she waved it in Gellman’s direction. “Stay away from me, you damned Union cur or I’ll shoot you like the dog you are.”

  A lot of people rose, heading for exits, standing on top of tables and yelling theatrically. The other Gellman brother was on his feet now and would have run for the exit if the steps leading to the stage weren’t clogged with people who’d crowded closer for a better look.

  There was no garden hose in the auditorium, and Harold Beasman soon realized this, glancing around in a puzzled way while Geraldine Mullet waved her blunderbuss and the candle with amazing dexterity.

  Joe nudged the ersatz fireman and pointed to the big fire extinguisher on the wall. “Hang on folks,” Harold said, and ran for it, then came at Geraldine from behind, shooting a stream of white that hit her, the candle, both Gellman’s, the podium and a great deal of the floor.

  Geraldine shrieked even louder and turned on him, but he was having the time of his life. The candle was snuffed, but he continued to spray everything in sight, including the crowd at the bottom of the steps. They backed up in a hurry, which left the thick Gellman room to bolt. He ran for the stairs, slipped in the fire retardant foam and reaching for anything to stop his fall, grabbed the microphone stand. The thunk as it and Gellman hit the floor was magnified throughout the hall, along with a very ripe curse.

  This was great stuff. Emily felt like applauding.

  But the best was yet to come.

  She heard the sound of hooves thundering outside and then Napoleon rode in on his black stallion. People backed away to clear a path and he trotted forward a few paces then stopped, surveyed the melee and pulling out a trumpet blew a loud report.

  “I will have order from my army,” he shouted. Then blew his trumpet again. The noise was deafening.

  “General Lasalle, you will take your troops outside.” He bowed graciously to Madame Dior, who rose nobly to the occasion and marched everyone who’d been sitting at her table out of the hall in orderly formation.

  His strategy was simple but brilliant. Table by table, almost like at a big banquet when table numbers are called, Helmut Scholl aka Napoleon called on people he knew to lead their neighbors out of the hall. Emily was called on to exit behind Ernie, who was standing in for Marshall Ney.

  Soon everyone stood outside the bingo hall looking at Napoleon. Including Emily. She’d never seen the man so commanding. Helmut really should have gone for a life in the military, she thought.

  Geraldine Mullet stalked out of the place. Instead of the candlestick or the old model pistol, she held Harold Beasman’s fireman hat in one hand and Harold’s ear in the other, by which she was dragging him. “My dress is ruined,” she cried. “You’re nothing but a damned Yankee.”

  “Madame,” Napoleon said. Geraldine Mullet looked up at him. “My Josephine.” He smiled down at her and held out his hand. “Come, my Empress. We will depart this place.”

  Geraldine dropped the hat and poor Harold’s ear and tottered forward. “Oh, yes, Rhett. Take me away from here.�
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  Joe ran forward and knelt with his hands cupped, so Geraldine could place her foot there and then he hoisted her up where she settled, sideways in Napoleon’s lap.

  It was a mish-mash of historical time periods and Hollywood endings, but as an exit it was superb. The black stallion tossed its head and Helmut circled Geraldine’s waist with his arm.

  With a brisk nod to the gaping crowd, he turned the horse and they cantered away.

  “Did you plan that ending?” Joe asked Emily softly.

  She sighed deeply, watching the horse disappear from view. “I couldn’t have dreamed up anything so perfect,” she said, hazarding a pretty shrewd guess that Geraldine Mullet was soon going to appear in Empire waist dresses, and hang on Napoleon’s arm. In fact, she thought, they made a pretty cute couple.

  “Why didn’t you just tell us this town was full of the criminally insane?” Milt Gellman asked Joe over a beer at Ernie’s tavern. The place was packed, but they had a corner to themselves, and it was clear that as soon as they left, the real celebration would begin. “We wasted a bunch of time and money on this site, for nothing.” He groaned. “Shit, I gotta get back and see my chiropractor. My lumbar is definitely out. I should sue those crackpots.”

  “They don’t have any money,” Joe reminded him.

  “Right. And they’re sure as shit not getting any of ours.”

  “So, you definitely don’t want to proceed on this?”

  “What, are you hard of hearing? I never want to set foot in this place again. Bunch of psychos.” He groaned again and rubbed his lower back. “We’re heading out tonight. I can’t stand this place. We’ll spend the night in a hotel and fly out tomorrow. You coming?”

  “No. I’ve…got some things to wrap up.”

  “Yeah, well, when you get back to New York we’ll start looking for another location for a plant. And not in a nut farm.”

  “You’ll want to get on your way pretty soon,” Joe said, thinking Ernie’s would be rocking the minute they left.

  The thin Gellman drove them back to The Shady Lady. “I’ll go settle the bill.” He left and Milt looked at Joe and said, “Goddamn bed and breakfast. Doesn’t even have a porter.”

  “Right. Let me carry your bags down to the car for you. Save your back.”

  He didn’t even glance Emily’s way as he passed her in the foyer, where she was chatting pleasantly to Eric Gellman while he signed his charge card slip.

  He put the bags in the Gellmans’ rental car and shook hands with them both before watching them drive away.

  He walked slowly back to The Shady Lady. Emily walked around from behind the desk. “Well? Are they gone?”

  He nodded.

  “Are they ever coming back?”

  He shook his head.

  “Wa-Hoo!” she cried. “We did it!”

  She ran forward into his arms and he spun her around, then stopped to kiss her long and hard.

  Holding that sweet, sweet body in his arms gave him some ideas on exactly how he wanted to celebrate the crash of a big deal. Not caring in the slightest that the aunts were looking on, he picked up his woman and showed her exactly how the Rhett and Scarlett climbing the stairs thing was done.

  When he kicked her door shut behind them, he carried her to her bed and laid her gently down. “I fell asleep last night in your bed,” he said, still hardly able to believe it.

  “I know,” she smiled up at him, her eyes telling him she knew exactly what that meant to him.

  “You cured me.”

  “You saved Beaverton.”

  “I need to make love to you so badly I hurt.”

  For answer, she attacked his belt buckle and when she had them both naked, she climbed on top of him and took them both for a ride.

  While he thrust up into her, he knew he wasn’t leaving. Not this woman. What he was going to do he hadn’t figured out yet, but he knew he was going to be the man who proved to Emily that the right man stayed.

  “We can’t stay in bed,” she moaned.

  “Give me one good reason?”

  “Everybody in town will be over here for a debriefing.”

  He kissed her, fast but thorough. “That’s a good reason.”

  They cleaned up and dressed quickly, then he organized chairs while Emily got tea and coffee going, plated cookies. Within the hour all the major players in the town meeting farce were assembled in Emily’s parlor.

  “Tea?” Emily asked the assembled company.

  “Or scotch?” Joe asked, flourishing the Johnny Walker black label that the Gellman brothers had left behind unopened.

  When the beverages of choice were dished out, Emily raised her scotch glass and said, “I’d like to make a toast. To all of us for saving our town.”

  “Those awful men did have a point, though,” said Olive, “The local economy’s not exactly thriving.”

  “But we’re all getting by. We’re all happy.”

  “Sure, but it’s hard for the young people. They mostly leave. It sure would be nice to have something for them to do around here.”

  Dr. Hartnett nodded. “Olive’s right. Plus, we may have prevented the mine, but the sanitarium still owes back taxes. That’s a prime piece of property. Someday, somebody’s going too buy it up.”

  “I’ve got some ideas about that,” Joe said, as the obvious answer hit him like a lightning bolt.

  “What now?” Lydia piped up. “A nuclear waste dump?” She and some old boy were holding hands and mooning at each other. Her wrinkled beau laughed his head off at her joke.

  Joe shook his head, but he smiled at her anyway. How could he resist? “I cannot believe I didn’t see it sooner. It’s perfect.”

  “What’s perfect?” Emily asked. He heard the thread of hope in her voice and he hung on to it.

  “Dr. Emmet Beaver’s sanitarium for health, both physical and mental. You know what we call that kind of place today?”

  Everyone stared at him, then Emily’s expression changed from puzzlement to wide eyed delight. “A spa?”

  “Yes. A spa. I’ve got connections and investors. There are hot springs, the kind you can drink, there’s the scenery which is superb.”

  “So you did notice,” Emily said.

  “After you pointed out what was under my nose. Yes. There’s the main building which will need some renovation, but has a lot going for it.” He thought about those marble baths and thought those alone would pack in the guests.

  “We’ll do all the usual treatments, the facials, the wraps, the specialty baths but we’ll also offer this unique location, we’ll offer walking trails and trail rides. We’ve already got so much here to take advantage of. There’s Amy’s organic herbs and vegetables, the horses that are perfect for city slickers, the air’s clean.”

  Gordon Hartnett spoke up. “I’ve found something in this water that I’ve still been unable to identify exactly, but there is no doubt in my mind that it’s healthier here. People will come back again and again.”

  “We’ve got something else, too,” Olive said.

  “What’s that?” Joe asked.

  “I found the recipe for Dr. Beaver’s special tonic.”

  “You mean the love potion? You found the recipe?” For a medical doctor, Gord sounded pretty damned excited.

  “If we get started right away, we can have a batch ready for my birthday,” Lydia said. “Under the O, Orgy!” Then she looked at her old-boyfriend sitting next to her with his eyebrows raised. “Oh, what the hell,” she said. “We can play strip bingo. Just the two of us.”

  Gord whispered to his wife, who nodded, and said, “If you want a local investor, Joe, count me in.”

  “Me, too,” said Aunt Olive.

  Joe blinked, saw Emily was also showing signs of shock. “What do you mean?” Emily asked her. “You’ve got money to invest?”

  “Honey, your great grandfather was a very smart man. You know all his theories about electricity?”

  “Yes.”

 
Olive nodded smugly. “In his will he left me and Lydia a thousand shares of stock in General Electric. I’ve never sold a single one. Didn’t have any reason to. But Emmet would sure love this.”

  “I can’t believe—”

  “I’ve got my thousand as well,” Lydia piped in.

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  The two old women looked at each other. “You’ve got a thousand too.”

  “What?”

  “Your grandmother left them to us for you.” The old woman grinned. “Do you have any idea what those shares are worth now? With all the times the shares have split, and the dividends that we’ve reinvested – well, it’s a small fortune.”

  After the way she’d been stretching pennies lately, she was having trouble taking in the news. And also, she wasn’t best pleased to have been kept in the dark. “But why in trust?”

  “Patrice wanted you to have something to fall back on if you ever needed a financial cushion. She was worried you’d do something stupid if you had the shares too soon.”

  “Well, that’s ridiculous. I’m not foolish with money.”

  “What would you have done with it?”

  “Well, I’d have, I’d have…” Joe watched as Emily sent her aunts a rueful look. “I’d have paid off the back taxes on Emmet’s property.”

  They nodded in unison. “Your gran wanted you to be able to leave if this town ever died, which, let’s face it, it came close to doing.”

  “But now?”

  “Now, we pay off the taxes and let’s build ourselves a spa.”

  They all turned to Joe who was still trying to absorb the fact that so many of these fruitcakes were crazy like foxes. “What do we do now, Joe?”

  “Now, you let me do what I do best. I’ll put this deal together.”

  “From New York?” Emily asked, looking at her drink instead of him.

  “No, Em. From right here.”

  She glanced up quickly and he saw the hope leap into her eyes.